MENTAL DIETS: WHAT IT IS AND HOW TO CLEAN YOURS UP
Hey everyone, welcome back to The Dairy Free Diaries. Hope you all are doing amazing and have been working towards your goals!!! This week we are going to talk about something so near and dear to my heart; and that is mental diets.
Starting out I had no idea what this was or what it was about, but trust me it is so much more powerful than you realize. I hope you all take insights from my experience and are able to find a way to incorporate it into your lifestyle.
WHAT IS A MENTAL DIET?
If you are reading this and confused about what a mental diet is, don’t worry. I had no idea about what that was for majority of my life. And I feel like most people aren’t aware of the power your mental diet has. But before I get into that, what the heck is a mental diet?
Your mental diet is characterized by the things you hear, see, believe, and think; the information you take in from various sources. In some cases, the things you hear have more value and impact than the things you see, and vice versa.
The sources are not created equally and each person is impacted by each of them differently. Our thoughts and beliefs are usually a result of the things we are told and what we see. There is a chain link of events here that lead up to the cultivation of your mental diet that’s important to note.
No matter the level of care you give your mental diet; it will start to spill into your behavior and how you view your life and the world around you. It is very easy to make the comparison to an actual diet; a way of eating.
And this is true. The things you are putting into your body have a direct effect on how you look and feel. If you are eating of diet of primarily processed food, you might experience the negative effects it has on your health.
Whereas, if you are eating a balanced diet, you will experience the positive effects it has on your health. The difference here is that your actual diet impacts your physical health, while your mental diet directly impacts your mental health.
The things that you consume, whether it be from those around you or on social media, directly impact how you feel about yourself and the world around you. This is such a powerful connection that must be monitored and taken care of.
And the great thing is that you can be your own monitor and caretaker. And I will walk you through how you can control how you think about yourself and the world by filtering the information you let in. It is going to be a long process, but truly worth it. Trust me.
THE INFLUENCE OF YOUR THOUGHTS AND WORDS
Whether you notice it or not, what you think and say have a great amount of power about how you feel and behave. Do you know the saying, “The negative things people say about you have more to do with them, than you”?
It shows how our thoughts and words impact the kind of person we are. Although the words we say to others are very important, I think it’s truly necessary to start with cleaning up the words and thoughts we have about ourselves, because those can often de more detrimental to how we feel about ourselves.
I like to think of this in terms of two categories: subconscious and conscious thoughts. Subconscious thoughts are the ones that just pop into our minds and you feel like you are listening to someone else saying it.
While, conscious thoughts are those that we either say out loud or are aware of the fact that we are thinking it. Both of these are equally powerful and vital to the makeup of our mental diet.
But the great news is that you can use your mental diet to control how you feel about yourself. There is going to be some cleaning up to do, but if you put in the work, you can be free from that critical, destructive part of yourself.
THE TECHNIQUES
There are a few ways in which you can clean up this part of your mental diet, but I have two sure-fire ways that have been the easiest for me to implement.
The first being positive affirmations, which are little statements that are usually written using an “I am…” structure. They are representative of who you are striving to be, but as if you have already reached that goal.
So, if one thing you want to work on is being more confident in yourself, an example of a positive affirmation is “I am confident in myself and my abilities”.
So come up with a list of positive affirmations that represent who you want to be and say these to yourself every day or write them down. The point is to introduce these into your thoughts on a daily basis and you will consistently start to see yourself change.
The more you say these positive affirmations, the quicker until you start to become that person you are striving to be. It may sound a bit crazy, but don’t knock it until you try it.
The second trick when it comes to cleaning up your mental diet is challenging negative self-talk. I have had such a hard time battling the negative self-talk, but there is one technique that has stuck.
Every time a negative thought entered my mind, I would ask myself, “Why am I feeling this way?” or “What is my justification for feeling this way?”. And once I answer I start to challenge or find holes in my justification.
An example of this would be if the negative thought is “I feel guilty for sleeping in an extra hour today” and my justification was that I needed to be extra productive today and now I am behind.
The holes I have found are that: 1) there is nothing wrong with listening to my body 2) by resting for another hour, I will feel much more refreshed and energized to take on the day.
So, this is a great example because once you realize that the thoughts you have aren’t truth, you will find it easier and easier to challenge them. The more you challenge the more you are cleaning your mental diet.
I just want to note that those thoughts aren’t going to go away completely. They will be scarcer if you are being consistent with the clean-up, but as long as you have the techniques in place to protect your mental diet from them, you will be free and feeling better than ever.
